People often ask me about good ways to devise a test strategy for a new epic or feature. Like many practitioners, I find a risk-based approach works well. I’m a big fan of Beren Van Daele’s risk storming with TestSphere cards. I had the good fortune during 2020 to participate in risk storming sessions facilitated […]
Read Morecollaborating
Lots of new blogs, podcasts, videos to share!
Hi friends! I haven’t posted here for a long while, because I’ve spent my time co-writing blog posts with Janet Gregory on our Agile Testing Fellowship blog. We also write our monthly newsletter with exclusive content, please subscribe if you haven’t already! Most excitingly, Janet and I record monthly 15 minute video chats on our […]
Read MoreShifting left & right in our continuous world
Pick up any article or watch any talk on a testing-related topic these days, and you’re bound to see the terms “shift left” and “shift right”. They’re almost a cliché. What do they really mean? Modern software development isn’t supposed to be linear anymore, right? There’s not one point where it starts and another point […]
Read MoreThose checklists
I had the luxury of working on a terrific team at a financial services startup from the early 00s to the early 10s. Though we jelled as a self-organizing agile team with expert domain knowledge, we occasionally made some really dumb mistakes when deploying to production. The operations VP, Anne, wagged her finger at us […]
Read MoreAll-remote retrospective
In February I wrote about the experimental retrospective format for our team’s “cross-pod retro” (so-called, because our large team is divided into smaller pods). Since then, my manager Jo Webb and I have continued to tweak the retro format, based on feedback from surveys done following each retro. Building on feedback Our teammates said they […]
Read MoreTelling stories together while practicing critical thinking with VTS
We use our story telling and critical thinking skills constantly as we test and develop software. How often do we practice those skills on something other than features we are going to release to production? Musicians practice their craft. Even coders can practice their craft with katas and code retreats. How can we practice telling […]
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